As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to these users is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may vary with respect to the type of information handled; the methods for handling the information; the methods for processing, storing or communicating the information; the amount of information processed, stored, or communicated; and the speed and efficiency with which the information is processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include or comprise a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is an organization involved in the development of management standards computing systems. One DMTF standard is the Common Information Model (CIM). The Common Information Model provides a common definition of management information for systems, networks, applications, and services, while allowing for vendor extensions of the same. CIM's common definitions enable vendors to exchange management information between systems throughout the network. The CIM standard is composed of both a CIM specification and a CIM schema. The CIM schema provides the data model for each managed object of the system. Objects identify and describe the resources of the system. Standard CIM schema covers many of the standard elements of a computer system.
A system that supports the CIM will include a CIM Object Manager (CIMOM), which provides an interface between CIM providers and management applications. A CIM provider retrieves data and event notifications from the managed objects of the system. Because the standard CIM schema definitions evolve rapidly, a modification to a standard schema for a managed object may necessitate the modification of the code of the provider associated with the managed object and a recompilation of the provider. In addition, additional testing may be required to validate the modifications to the schema and the provider.